Page 27 of Finding Her Billionaire Cowboy Mismatch

“Don’t let me keep you from your work,” she said, not meaning a word of it.

Stephen set the coil down and gave her the courtesy of his attention. With Annie a man had small choice in it. She had a way of filling the quiet before he could decide if he was participating or not. And she was his boss’s wife, so there was that.

“Midge is putting on a supper Friday, both outfits, the whole spread under the oaks,” she said. “You’re not a man to miss a fine barbecue, so I won’t pester you for a yes. I’ll save you a seat and look for you Friday.”

She started to go, then swung around the way she always did, with the part she’d half meant to lead with. “You ought to talk Elise into riding over with you, by the by. That girl’s been a ghost all week. Came through to drop the catering numbers and hardly smiled at a joke.”

Stephen kept his eyes on the wire. “She’s been busy,” he said. “Robert’s chasing that Abilene buyer.” It came out a guess rather than a fact.

The secret sat heavy in him, out now and going mouth to mouth. No telling how far it had run. Annie hadn’t a notion she’d struck anything tender.

Elise had been a ghost all week. Stephen turned the word over in his mind. She’d gone quiet as soon as she’d found out about his inheritance. But the worst part was she’d found out by accident from someone besides him.

He could label his actions any way he chose. The one that let him off the hook of having wronged her was easiest. He’d rather not face the fact that he’d been the one to spoil a good thing. The thought shamed him, but he didn’t try to change the narrative.

The bitter joke was that her guard and his were basically cut from the same cloth, and they’d both tried to protect themselves against each other instead of the world.

Standing still at the fence line he let his mind wander. A few weeks back he’d taken her to the pond on his property. Held her hand on the bank and let himself picture a string of years he had no right to count on. He started working again to get his mind off that memory.

By the time the light was gone he had the fence restrung and his mind made up, the way a man makes it up when the truth costs more than he can pay. He’d be cordial at the Friday supper, pass her the rolls with a level voice, and give her not one inch of the soft ground that had already cost him so dearly.

Friday would be the test. Elise down the row with her plate and her dry remarks for everyone but him. He’d sit through it. Even he could get through a barbecue.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Bolton yard had gone loud and bright with both outfits and half the town, and Elise was three jokes deep into the tale of Robert booking himself onto two conference calls at once when Kelly snorted lemonade clean out her nose.

Both ranches had thrown in together the way they did every June, long tables set end to end under the oaks, Midge’s people running plates, somebody’s string lights looped up through the branches. Elise had a paper cup of sweet tea sweating in her hand and a ring of women around her, and for the length of one good story she was the most charming soul in three counties, and she half believed it.

“That’s a bald-faced lie,” Kelly said, mopping her chin. “Robert has never once double-booked a call.”

“He stacked the Abilene buyer on top of his dentist last Tuesday,” Elise said. “I had to phone a grown man’s root canal a scheduling conflict.”

“Oh, that man.” Annie wiped her eyes. “Remember when he turned up at the bank in two different boots, because Kelly reorganized his closet overnight?”

“I did not reorganize, I improved,” Kelly said, with great dignity. “There is a difference, and the difference is love.”

“And there it is,” Elise said. “A Shipley woman’s love language, spoken fluent. One clean, labeled shelf at a time.”

Kelly had already named the evening. The Great Hoedown Reckoning, she’d dubbed it, on account of last year’s potato-salad incident that nobody would explain to Elise no matter how she pried.

Annie laughed so hard she had to set her plate down on a cooler to do it right. Elise reached over without thinking and squared the drift of napkins someone had left wilting by the sweet-tea jugs.

“Off the clock, Pollard.” Kelly swatted her arm. “Nobody’s grading the napkins tonight.”

“Force of habit,” Elise said, and squared them anyway, and swept the whole row of hooting women a little bow.

“That bow is the most action this party has had,” Kelly declared, and refilled Elise’s tea without being asked, which was the Shipley version of a hug.

She let the laughter carry her. It was good, all of it, the noise and the brisket smoke hanging sweet over the yard and the press of people who had nowhere better to be. She’d promised herself a fine evening, and she meant to collect on it.

She had not let her eyes go hunting the crowd for one particular hat. She’d caught herself at it twice and quit both times. Whether Stephen Garrett turned up tonight was his own business. He’d shown her the whole of what he was, and a woman could build a perfectly good evening on lowered expectations.

Midge came out of the cookhouse hollering that the banana pudding was up, and the crowd shifted toward the dessert table as one hungry animal. Elise had the line sorted before she’d meant to lift a finger, the little ones moved to the front with their bowls, a shy teenager talked into steadying the serving spoon.

A little girl in a too-big cowboy hat tugged Elise’s skirt and held up a bowl scraped down to the shine. “Miss, can I have more nanner puddin’?”

“You sure can, but you didn’t get it from me.” Elise snuck her a second helping and a wink, and the girl scampered off as though she’d pulled off a bank heist in broad daylight.